Christmas Ornament Learning Activities

These learning activities don’t use actual Christmas ornaments, but they do use the shapes of ornaments to aid in learning, or making an ornament with an educational twist.

Look We’re Learning has a set of printable worksheets using Christmas ornaments to learn about patterns that are the same and different. There are color and black and white versions included so you can have kids color all the ornaments, or just color the ones that match.

Learn about patterns and make your own with these free printables from Planes and Balloons. There are options for picking what comes next in a repeating pattern, blank ornaments so you can make your own pattern, and a coloring sheet with different designs of ornaments and you can draw lines to the matching ones or color them the same.

Little learners can practice tracing short lines with these printable ornaments from Fluffy Tots. You can get a sample for free or buy a set of 60 different ornaments that let kids practice short straight, curved and curly lines.

Add a bit of critical thinking to your Christmas learning activities with this Christmas decoder project from STEAM Powered Family. Use the symbols on the ornaments to decode the secret message, then find the word that matches and put the ornament back together. There are also blank ornaments so kids can write their own messages, or you can use the code to make up your own statements and have kids decode them.

Get kids coding for Christmas with these binary code ornaments from Little Bins for Little Hands. Once you know the basics of binary you can spell out holiday themed words, kids names or other secret messages and turn them into holiday ornaments.

And while we’re making ornaments with an educational twist, why not paint some ornaments that teach kids about symmetry? Download templates from Crafting a Fun Life or have kids draw their own, paint on half and make a symmetrical ornament that’s perfect for displaying in the classroom.

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Black History Month Activities for Kids

As I write this, back to school time is right around the corner, and if you have kids going to school for the first time or who might need a refresher on what school is like, books can be a big help in calming fears and letting them know what to expect.

School Days by Fabiola Sepulvelda is a wordless picture book full of photographs of various things that happen during the school day, such as leaving home, getting off the bus, greeting your teacher, raising your hand to talk, circle time, reading, quiet work, lunch, recess, art and music, and greeting your parent at the end of the day.

This is a nice book to prompt conversations about the way things might look and things that might happen at school, and could also be used in the classroom to talk about routines and what happens each day. It’s meant to be for kids who don’t yet know how to read, but could be used with older kids as well.

Ready for School by Dona Herweck Rice and illustrated by Amanda Morrow follows a little girl through a day getting ready for school and thinking about all the things that happen at school. It covers things like calendar time, mat time, being read to, math (they’re learning to count to five), recess and art. She’s so excited to go she wakes her mom up and it’s still nighttime.

This one is good for kids who like reminders of how the routine goes (both getting ready for school and being there) and those who might be apprehensive about what’s going to happen or if it will be fun.

The same author has a series of books that are meant to be for ESL learners but would work for others as well. Welcome to School has photos and single words or short phrases for things you do to get ready for school, different ways you might travel there, greetings, morning meeting activities. people you might see at school (like teacher, student, custodian), places and objects you’ll find around school, things at recess and school rules (like line up and raise hand).

Your School Day uses longer phrases (“riding in car” instead of just “car,” for example) and older children in the photos. The routine is also for older kids and uses bigger words like announcements and equipment. It also shows photos of different subjects kids might study, different kinds of learning groups and more people and places you’ll find in school.

A Day at School is kind of in between these two, with older elementary students going through many of the same things. This one doesn’t mention morning meetings but also doesn’t use the level of vocabulary of the book for older kids. Either this one of Welcome to School would be fine to use with young kids who already speak English but might like to see all the things and people they’ll see at school.

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